I t began in Spain.
Colonel Fitzwilliam had been stationed at a windswept garrison near the Pyrenees, on the fractured border between order and chaos. Officially, he was part of a diplomatic liaison, shuttling intelligence to British commanders from partisan informants.
Unofficially, he was one of a growing number of shadow agents operating for the Home Office—men who moved without uniform or rank, who knew how to listen more than speak, who could follow a whisper as though it were a map.
The war was not only one of uniforms and artillery—it was one of whispers. One of shadows.
Napoleon’s forces were everywhere and nowhere at once, and British agents were dispatched with more questions than answers, always one step behind some vanishing trail of parchment and blood.
Fitzwilliam had already proven himself—first in Cadiz, then in Lisbon. Clever, composed, and fluent in several languages, he was offered a position under General Wellesley’s auxiliary command. But it was not tactics they needed from him—it was secrets.
He had chosen his codename quickly, without hesitation.
“Raven,” he had said.
The official had raised a brow. “Why?”
“If they are good enough for Odin to choose to be his scouts….” His voice trailed off, and the official shook his head.
“Whatever you want.”
He did not realize at the time just how apt the moniker would become—nor how quickly his reputation would grow.
By the time the colonel’s first tour on the Continent was complete, rumors about the fabled Raven had spread across Europe in the form of hushed, fearful whispers in dark alleys. And by the time his second round of assignments had commenced, his notoriety was that of legends.
But along with fame came enemies.
The first whisper of Le Corbeau came not from England, but from a terrified courier in Madrid, who claimed that a French agent—a ghost —was executing royalist sympathizers.
Cleanly. Quietly.
Always alone.
Always unseen.
And always with a significant amount of sophisticated torture.
No one knew his real name or his face, but he left a calling card each time: a single black crow’s feather on the victim’s chest or the edge of the scene.
Like an artist signing his painting, Le Corbeau made it clear just who was responsible for each political assassination. The victims were always enemies of Napoleon, and the method of death always reflected a certain level of sadism.
At first, Colonel Fitzwilliam dismissed all of the reports of Le Corbeau as mere stories that grew as they were told, like a small flame being introduced to more air and dry timber.
But then the victims began to change, and a pattern began to emerge.
The banker in Paris. The translator in Brussels. A former general’s widow in Marseille. A shipping magnate with ties to émigré movements in Bordeaux. All murdered without clear cause. All of them people Fitzwilliam had been scheduled to contact—or had just missed by hours.
The worst was Bruges. He had arrived at a safe house under rain-slicked clouds, the window still cracked from a hasty exit. The fire was still warm. On the sill, as if placed deliberately, lay a single crow’s feather, heavy with moisture.
It had been left for him.
That was the first time it felt personal.
From then on, it became a game. One with high stakes and invisible pieces. He would uncover a lead; it would vanish. He would secure a name; the person would disappear or die. Every time he came close, Le Corbeau slipped away like smoke through fingers. Brilliant. Invisible. Unrelenting.
In the dark hours of sleepless nights, Colonel Fitzwilliam wondered: was it luck? Or was he being tested?
They began leaving things for each other. Clues. Warnings. A knife with a Latin inscription left at an abandoned checkpoint. A coded note folded into a false bottom of a diplomatic valise. Once, in Prague, Fitzwilliam found a page torn from a children’s fable— The Raven and the Fox —with a blood-red X over the raven’s eyes.
He had burned it.
It was no longer a pursuit—it was a rivalry.
A battle of wills and wits across half a continent.
Only one would win.
And then, in a tumbled-down town, west of Rouen, Fitzwilliam finally stumbled across a breakthrough. Two decades before, during the great Reign of Terror, there had been a survivor.
A noble child—born to a cousin of the Bourbon line—had been spirited away to grow up in hiding. Raised as the son of a farmer, the young man had grown up, married, and was about to father a child.
Colonel Fitzwilliam was elated. At last, he would be the one to arrive first.
But someone betrayed them. He arrived too late. The house was ash and rubble, and everyone inside was slaughtered.
A single crow’s feather lay across the mouth of the young man, lying gutted next to his even younger wife—who was astonishingly not with child.
Desperately, Colonel Fitzwilliam followed the trail to the edge of the Spanish border, expecting at every moment to encounter the most gruesome of discoveries: a murdered infant.
But instead, he found her: Denisse.
She was barely standing. Her coat torn, her arms scraped from briars, her face hollow with fear and desperation. But she clutched the child like something sacred. When she learned Fitzwilliam was English, she wept—not with grief, but with hope.
She told him everything. The massacre. Her change of heart. Her flight. And the shadow behind her.
Even then, she knew who followed.
Le Corbeau.
Colonel Fitzwilliam brought them to London. Gave them a new name, a new home. He thought—hoped—it would be enough. She had provided details of the man who had incited their group to arms, details that he prayed would be enough to help him finally identify the man he had spent nearly a decade trying to outwit.
But then came the fire.
And when he arrived at the scorched edge of Cheapside, all that remained of Denisse was a body pulled from the street and a building burned to the ground.
The baby was gone.
And in the soot near what had once been the nursery, lying in the cradle, there was a black crow’s feather.
Le Corbeau had followed them to England and nearly burned down half of London, killing hundreds, all to finish his assignment: to eliminate the remaining line of Bourbon.
The message was clear: I am still ahead of you.
The colonel had scoured the city for weeks, tearing through records, bribing informants, risking exposure. But the trail had gone cold. He never found out who had taken the child—or if the child had even survived.
He returned to the Home Office with nothing but charred hands and a mind tormented by failure.
Until Darcy’s first letter came, and there was a mention of a girl who had rescued a baby during the fire.
An investigator was dispatched…and then murdered.
But his final words: Tell the raven it was the crow.
Le Corbeau—or, in English, The Crow—was in Hertfordshire.
The war had come to Meryton.
∞∞∞
Darcy sat frozen. He already knew some of what his cousin had shared, but not to this extent. He knew there was a foreign spy hunting the baby and that Smithson worked for the colonel and England.
But he had not known the full scale of Colonel Fitzwilliam’s service in name of king and country.
The things he has seen… what he has been through…
He could not speak—could barely breathe, though it had little to do with the persistent ache in his chest. The room, the fire, the faint ticking of the clock on the mantel—all seemed to fade to some distant hum. Across from him, Colonel Fitzwilliam leaned forward, elbows braced on his knees, his voice still echoing in the space they shared.
Le Corbeau.
The Crow.
The scope of it—espionage, assassination, traitors in the militia, the near-destruction of London itself—it defied imagination. And yet Darcy knew the colonel too well to doubt him. His cousin had always been clever, yes. Witty, charming, quick with a joke and quicker still to rescue Darcy from any awkward moment in society.
But this… this was something else entirely.
Darcy had known Colonel Fitzwilliam served in Spain. He had seen the hardened edge that wartime left in a man. But he had not known this.
How many dinners had they sat through at Matlock House, his aunt complaining about the state of the Empire’s trade while the colonel merely sipped his wine and nodded? How many assemblies had they attended where the colonel flirted and danced and laughed, never revealing that he had once chased a ghost across the breadth of Europe?
Darcy felt the hair at the back of his neck prickle. He had always thought of himself as the more serious of the two, the more responsible. But now he realized—perhaps Fitzwilliam had simply been the better actor.
He turned slightly, just enough to glance at Elizabeth.
She was leaning forward towards the colonel, her face unreadable in the firelight. But her eyes—those eyes he had come to study with such devotion—were dark with something deeper than fear. Her hands were folded tightly in her lap, white-knuckled. She was not merely shocked. She was absorbing every word, just as he had.
And something in her expression… something told him that she understood the weight of what had just been placed in her lap. She did not look away. She had not flinched. He felt the swell of pride for her—pride and something fiercer still.
When the colonel finally leaned back and exhaled, it was with the weariness of a man who had dragged a mountain behind him.
Darcy cleared his throat. It was a moment before he could speak. “And all this time…” His voice came out quieter than he intended. “You let me believe you were merely drinking brandy with generals and writing reports.”
The colonel gave a tired smile. “I was drinking brandy with generals. And writing reports. Just… occasionally under fire.”
Darcy let out a breath and shook his head slowly. “You are the Raven.”
The colonel shrugged. “The name suited.”
It did. And Darcy saw now just how well. The cunning. The patience. The careful observation masked by charm. He had never fully seen it before. And now he did.
The fire popped in the grate, breaking the quiet.
Darcy looked to Elizabeth again. Her brow furrowed slightly, lips parted as though still considering what to say.
“What does it mean now?” she asked softly. “If Le Corbeau is in Hertfordshire—what happens next?”
The colonel’s eyes met hers. “It means the baby is still vulnerable, and there is far less time than we thought.”
Darcy’s jaw clenched. Elizabeth was in danger.
∞∞∞
Elizabeth was in shock, unable to do anything more than sit in stunned silence.
The fire flickered and popped in the hearth, but its warmth barely touched the chill that had taken hold of her. The colonel’s tale had unfurled like something from the pages of a gothic novel—mystery and murder, spies and shadows, a decades-long hunt that had spanned nations.
And she had sat through it all without interrupting, breath caught tight in her chest, heart hammering behind her stays.
Tell the raven it was the crow.
Tell the Raven it was the Crow .
An assassin. A ghost. A legend.
And now he was in Meryton.
In her mind, she pictured Benjamin asleep in his cradle just up the stairs in the nursery—innocent, unaware. Her arms suddenly ached to hold him tight against her, to keep him safe from the evil that had intruded into their lives.
She had thought she was saving a baby from a life of misery—or even death in an orphanage.
But no—she was saving the last hope of a noble line, one related to French royalty. A symbol of everything the revolutionaries had sought to erase.
It was only a simple act of compassion. That’s all—it was never meant to be…. this.
Her actions the night of the fire were nothing more than acting on an impulse in the chaos of the moment. She had done what anyone with a heart would have done.
And yet, because of that moment—because of that mercy—everything had changed.
A baby with royal blood—albeit distant—had been saved.
Then Darcy had come across her in Hyde Park, assisting her in her altercation with the soldier…only to show up again in Meryton several months later.
And he just happened to be the cousin of the only man in the kingdom who knew who Benjamin was.
It was all too incredible to believe.
She looked over at Darcy, who was watching his cousin with concern, the lines of worry and resolve carved deep into his features.
How strange it was to imagine that just a short time ago, she had believed him to be proud and cold. Yet here was evidence that still waters truly did run deep. She had believed him when he swore that he had no idea who Benjamin was when he had come to Meryton.
His attempts to get to know her, the friendship they had developed. It was because he wanted to, not because he was on assignment from his cousin.
And the colonel—the Raven. His story should have terrified her—should have sent her running for the nursery and bolting the doors.
But instead, she found herself breathless with awe.
All of it—every step—had led to this moment.
It was all too precise, too intricate in its coincidence.
Which means it is not a coincidence. It is Providence.
Somehow, for some reason, she had been placed at the center of this storm—not by calculation or design, but by something greater than any of them could understand.
Her skin prickled. The fear was still there—yes, how could it not be? There was a French assassin hunting her—or rather, the child she protected. There was a war not of soldiers but of shadows. And she, Elizabeth Bennet of Longbourn, was now part of it.
She did not know why she had been chosen. She was not the strongest or the cleverest or the most important. She was merely a young woman who had done what she thought was right.
But if that choice had brought her here, to this moment—if she had been placed in the path of a newborn child who now carried the hopes of a lineage long thought lost—then she would not falter.
The fear gave way for something else: resolve.
She would see it through.
She would do her part.
For Benjamin.
For her country.
For herself. For Darcy.
Slowly, she lifted her chin and looked between the two men. Her words, when they came, were quiet but sure.
“We cannot let him win.”
∞∞∞
Darcy stared at her, stunned.
She was pale—he could see the strain on her face, the tight line of her jaw, the faint tremble of her fingers where they rested against the arm of the chair. And yet her eyes burned like twin embers, fierce and determined.
In all his life, he had never seen anyone so brave.
Elizabeth Bennet, with nothing but her courage and wit, had stepped into the center of a secret war and declared she would stand her ground. That she would not falter. That she would protect that child—completely unrelated to her—even if it cost her everything.
It took his breath away.
I love her.
The thought struck him like lightning, burning through every wall he had carefully built. Fitzwilliam had pointed it out a few days prior, but Darcy had not acknowledged to himself.
There was no use denying it now—he was hopelessly, irrevocably in love with her. Every sharp word, every clever retort, every laugh, every fierce loyalty—he loved all of it.
Loved her.
Then marry her .
His mind spun—could he do it? Could he marry the woman that he loved?
You are weak, Fitzwilliam.
The words he had heard time and again from his father and, later on, his aunt echoed in his ears. His weakness, his frailty, was what caused Lady Catherine to change her mind about uniting her daughter with him. While that had been fortuitous, the hateful words she had flung at him had cut deep.
Even his aunt Lady Matlock had looked at him with a mixture of pity and disgust the last time he had been seized by a coughing fit in his presence.
But Elizabeth did not shy away; she had helped him.
Just as she had the elderly man in Hyde Park. Just as she had the baby.
It was who she was, and she was glorious.
No matter what came. No matter what danger lay ahead, he would marry her, or he would never be whole again.
“Then we cannot let him win,” she had said, with fire in her voice.
No, they could not.
The colonel nodded solemnly. “We need to smoke him out. But we must be careful—we may not find him directly. We may have to fool him into thinking he’s won. Perhaps if we push a false suspect forward—make the Crow believe we are looking in the wrong direction—he will grow careless.”
Darcy frowned. “A false suspect?”
“Someone close to the child. Someone plausible.” The colonel gave Elizabeth a hesitant glance. “Perhaps… your uncle.”
“No,” she said at once, her voice sharp as flint. “Absolutely not. My family is already in danger. We have had our home invaded, our safety threatened, and I will not subject my uncle to more scrutiny—especially not when the town is already watching us closely. It would be too much. Too risky.”
The colonel raised a hand. “All right. Then who?”
Darcy drew a slow breath, already knowing the answer. “Wickham.”
Elizabeth’s eyes flicked to him. The colonel straightened slightly. “Wickham?”
“It could work,” Darcy said. “He was in London for the fire and here for the murder. We could put it about that Wickham had been overheard arguing with Mr. Smithson about insurance matters. Then if everyone thinks he’s the suspect, Le Corbeau might relax his guard and make a mistake.”
“We would have to tell Wickham the truth,” the colonel said warily. “It adds yet another person who could inadvertently let confidential information slip.”
“Not the whole truth,” Elizabeth replied. “Only that we are trying to trap the real murderer. That we want to make it appear that he’s the primary suspect—to draw the actual killer into a mistake.”
The colonel leaned back. “Are you sure it was not Wickham? It is entirely possible that Smithson was not killed for being a spy, but for his faux role as insurance agent. After all, Wickham does have motive; he lost his employment due to the extreme delays of unmonitored insurance companies.”
Darcy shook his head. “No. It was not him. I know him too well. He’s impulsive at times, certainly, but he has never been evil or malicious, even at his worst.”
Elizabeth nodded. “There was truth in his eyes when he spoke to me about his regrets for his poor behavior in the past.”
There was a pause as the three of them considered the plan.
“Then we act quickly,” the colonel said. “Darcy and I will speak with Wickham and make the arrangements.”
“You may also wish to let Colonel Forster know as well,” Elizabeth interjected.
The colonel nodded. “We will also begin interviewing the soldiers and servants to confirm alibis, all under the guise of attempting to be fair in the investigation. Miss Elizabeth—your role will be vital. Keep the child under tight guard, but not hidden. You can also assist in spreading the whispers of Wickham’s guilt.”
“Many people saw us speaking at my aunt’s card party. I can spread word that he confided in me that Mr. Darcy has a vendetta against him from a childhood grievance. It will lend credence to the idea that you are targeting Wickham on purpose.”
“Excellent,” the colonel said. “We can also spread rumors among the officers of debts in London and a grudge against the insurance company for causing the loss of his employment there.”
Darcy and Elizabeth only had a moment to agree before the door flung wide open to admit Mrs. Bennet.
“Oh, my poor nerves,” she declared as she collapsed onto the settee, oblivious to startled looks she received from the room’s occupants. “I do believe Lydia has locked herself in the upstairs linen closet, and Kitty is weeping into her pillow. And as for Mary—well, she is quoting Ecclesiastes at them both, which is hardly helpful!”
Colonel Fitzwilliam straightened, already rising to offer some gallant remark, and Elizabeth tucked a stray curl behind her ear, her composure smoothing into something more practiced.
But Darcy could not look away from her, resolve forming in his mind.
I am going to marry her.